


Do Something

by emotionalsupporthufflepuff



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 14:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20836808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emotionalsupporthufflepuff/pseuds/emotionalsupporthufflepuff
Summary: The moments when Neville knew there was something more to Pansy





	Do Something

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sweetlyvillainous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sweetlyvillainous/gifts).

> To Waywarddreamer, Captain of the this particular ship  
Thank you for pushing me to write this year and thank you for being an awesome friend. Happy Birthday.

_ October 6th _

Neville is pretty sure this is all some terrible nightmare, or maybe even hell itself. 

Practicing the Cruciatus curse on first years. Children. Kids who just celebrated 11th birthdays months ago. 

And now they're all gathered around the limp body of a Gryffindor first year, who just can’t manage to stay conscious…

And where the fuck is Harry? Ron and Hermione are with him that’s obvious but he’s supposed to be here  _ doing something? _ Isn’t he? 

Someone has to do something…

And that’s when he hears it. The voice from the sorting hat from 7 years ago.  _ You have all the bravery you need to for Gryffindor, your time will come to use it.  _

Someone has to do something.

“Right, I’m taking him up to the hospital wing.” He hears his voice say it before he even knows he’s going to do it for sure. 

Seamus shakes his head. “No, it’s past curfew and you know what the new punishments are.”

“I don’t care.” He does but now’s not the time for that. Neville starts to pick up the first year and thinks he might need help but is surprised to find he doesn’t. All the other Gryffindors are silent as Neville carries the boy out of the tower.

He’s almost to the hospital wing when the soft clicking of heels on stone and quiet sniffling make there way around the corner. He can tell from the shadow coming around the corner from the torchlight it’s a student, which can only be trouble.

Then he’s face to face with Pansy Parkinson. Her hair is longer, the green prefect badge gleams on her chest, and she’s not wearing nearly as much makeup as she has in the past but there's something else different about her. The end of her nose is red and her eyes are bloodshot and while she’s still standing with perfect posture it is without the same air of viciousness as before. Her face is soft for just a few seconds before her features rearrange themselves back into the haughty mask he remembers.

“Curfew was more than an hour ago Longbottom. “ She snaps and her voice is like ice colliding hard with the stones. “ I could give you detention if I wanted to.” Her lip trembles are she says. 

“I’m going to the hospital wing and straight back to the tower.” His words aren’t nearly firm as he hoped they would come out. “ I won’t give you any trouble if you don’t give me any.”

He knows, he  _ knows _ it’s a lost cause because this is Pansy, she’s been teasing him for the better part of a decade. She going to spit out a string of insults about how stupid and incompetent he is. If he’s really not lucky Malfoy will come loping out of nowhere to help tear into him. 

Instead, she swipes her thumb under eyes, sniffs and walks past him, without a backward glance or another word. 

That night Neville thinks that Pansy might not be who she’s pretending to be. 

_ December 6th. _

It’s so unbearably bitterly cold, Neville is sure if he tried to scream it would freeze in his throat. 

He’s serving detention in the forbidden forest without a wand. He doesn’t deserve a wand for being a muggle- loving blood traitor and should learn how miserable it is without it. The Carrows are on You-Know-who’s order not to spill pureblood, but if he loses a limb to frostbite or one mouthy Gryffindor dies accidentally while being punished, they’ll take their punishment with smiles on their identical warped faces.

The dementors guarding Hogsmeade must be contributing to the cold because there's no way it’s ever been this cold, not in all the winters he’s spent here at Quidditch games or in the greenhouses late at night trying to get nocturnal plants to bloom.

Yawning, he recognizes it as a symptom of hypothermia and not actual exhaustion, though he does feel that too. He walks in a circle, shaking his arms out trying to name every plant he can think of alphabetically but knows he’s in trouble when he can’t make it past Baneberry without losing the thread. 

The sound of a twig snapping echoes in his through the silence and he turns throwing his hands up. Now, he thinks, he is hallucinating, because Pansy Parkinson isn’t out here, walking towards him. She’s in all black in sharp relief to the white world behind her. Breath floats out of her mouth like fog and she saying something but it sounds like she's shouting from far away. But she’s so close, he can see her eyes are hazel and not just brown, he can see the microscopic bits of snow clinging to her cheekbones and she really is pretty but she knows that right? Then he’s looking at the treetops and sky, and then nothing.

When he comes too he’s warmer and comfortable but she’s gone. He recognizes the steady pulse of warmth as a warming charm cast on his coat. But the only evidence he has of Pansy is some sliver and emerald yarn snagged on a low hanging tree branch. 

_ May 1st  _

“What's going on?”

He shakes his head, there's no time...he has to...he has to prepare…

“Longbottom. Tell me.” She points her wand in his face and her teeth are barred. Suddenly Pansy is more dangerous than she’s every even made herself seem. “I just heard fucking Amacycus shouting through the corridors that the Malfoys are all dead, does it have anything to do with that ?! “ her voice is shrill and carrying and for once she doesn’t care. Clearly, she’s had enough.

“The castle isn’t safe, they’re coming, get everyone out,” he says holding up his hands wondering if this is the last conversation they’ll have.

“What the fuck does that mean?! I’m not leaving the castle to go wandering around at night are you insane? “ Her eyes move from side to side scanning for signs of deception 

“I can’t tell you, just, get the underage Slytherins to safety.”

“NO! You must be out of your fucking mind Neville -”

“I know you saved me that night in the snow. I know you have a good heart Pansy-”

“Getting chummy now, aren’t we? When did I become Pan-”

“When did I become Neville?”

Color rises in her face and he knows she missed that slip the first time. She lowers her wand but doesn’t put it all the way away. “ Just...just..tell me if you know if that thing about the Malfoys is true…”

It doesn’t dawn on him right away, that this isn’t just a diversion away from her slip her up, but despite what his bullies have always said, Neville isn’t slow, he’s just quiet.

“ I...I admire…” goddammit, tongue-tied right now? “ I admire the way the fight for the people you love Pansy. You should know that. I don’t know what's going to happen tonight, so...you should know that…”

She flips her hair over her shoulder and gives him that cold glare and he knows he’s pushed too far and he’s been expelled from that circle of trust. 

“Loved, Longbottom. “ She turns on her heel and walks away quickly. Neville stands there for a few more heartbeats before he figures out where he was going before he ran into her. 

_ 10 years later _

After the war, after his Gran was settled in a new unplottable home and he’d seen his parents and told them everything, Neville traveled all over the world, getting his mastery in Herbology. Everywhere he went plants were primarily the same, as long as the had the basics and the right soil and little love, they would thrive, they would settle and they would reproduce. 

People were far more complicated. People trying to recover from two wizarding wars even more so.

He wrote to Gran, he did the work, he filled his notebooks with sketches of pansies, he dreamed of girls with dark hair and hazel eyes and he did his best to forget her. In his mind, he’d placed her on the arm of some rich pureblood Slytherin with a house the size of a small country and the required heir and spare those types we’re so partial too. Probably Malfoy, maybe Nott or Pucey, whichever she could have her pick.

So when he eventually came back to England he was shocked to see her on the cover of  _ Witch Weekly _ on Gran’s kitchen table. 

_ Why is the Wizarding world’s leading wedding planner still unattached? Find out inside! _

No thanks, he thinks trying to pry away from the image of Pansy in a short black dress, twirling her wand and smirking, kicking her heel up showing off shoes he’s sure no woman can actually walk in. If I find out why he thinks again, I’m prone to get crazy notions like I might have a chance or something. 

No one would ever call Augusta Longbottom pretty. Handsome may be because of her strong features and still clear skin, but the woman was blessed with a stare that could send dementors screaming for the hills. When he tosses down the copy of  _ Witch Weekly _ she’s staring at him just like that. 

“Pretty. Your age. Unattached. Pureblood-” she starts.

“You know that last one is far from important.” he snorts.

“It helps. It means she’s got her own money and won’t be digging for yours. You know, I’m thinking of a great big New Year party to celebrate my grandson being back in the country.” She taps a finger to her chin and though she isn’t smiling, the corners of her eyes are crinkling.

“No Gran.”

Unfortunately for Neville, no one has ever told Augusta Longbottom no and gotten away with it. 

Pansy’s sitting at that very table the next week when he comes in from his greenhouse. She looks just as shocked as he feels. He stumbles through some kind of greeting, looking at the dirt under his nails instead of her,  _ scourgifying _ his fingers with his wand, babbling some excuses about needing more fertilizer. Now. right now. Very important. He apparated from the kitchen to his favorite garden nursery.

Sure, he managed to dodge anymore encounters with her during the planning process, but Neville knows he’s going to be at that party even if he’s Gran has to Body-Bind him and prop him up the corner. 

But he’s not prepared for when he sees her from across the room.

She’s wearing a dark blue dress that’s tailored to every willowy curve she has. Black opaque tights climb up her long legs and the same black heels she was wearing on the magazine cover are on her feet. Not that he would know, not that he went back to the thing several times that day. It’s modest enough for Gran’s crowd of older witches but not nearly as shapeless as the school uniform she’d been in while living in his imagination.

He swallows nervously and prays to anyone who's listening to make just all end quickly. 

Of course, its the longest fucking New Year’s eve that's ever existed. The older set doesn’t even stick around till midnight so he can’t even hide in the crowd or pretend to be looking for someone else. He’s sure this was all perfectly orchestrated by his grandmother, there is no way this was an accident.

At ten until midnight, he slips outside to the back garden. There’s a railing around where it's terraced to go down a set of steps and he leans on the stone railing, letting the cold fill his lung and cool his skin. His greenhouse is calling him in the distance but he resists though he stares at it longingly.

“Don’t skip out on me now, Longbottom, I don’t normally do holiday parties.” says the painfully familiar voice behind him. Her heels crunched the ice on the pavers below them as she approaches, leaving considerable space between them. 

He gives her half a smile and she returns it in kind. “Thank you, for helping Gran with the party, by the way. “ is the least stupid and most boring thing he can think to say. “You did an amazing job, by the way.”

“ Your tie is crooked, come here.” he stands up straight and lets her fix it and its the closest they been since…

He turns his gaze to the sky and not her eyes.

“Your grandmother, shelled out a lot of money, for a party with a tiny guest list. We struggled to come up with 50 people she could stomach for even an hour. But she was insistent I do it and that I would be in attendance. “ She flattens the tie and something in her voice catches.” I had a hard time keeping the topic of conversation on anything but you. Why do you think that is? “ She’s looking up at him, studying his reaction and he begs his brain to make the right words at the right time.

“I don’t know why that is. Probably...probably something to do with keeping me local and having kids she can properly grandparent this time. “ He thinks, briefly, after that answer, he’s never speaking out loud again.

Pansy actually grins. “Perhaps. Or, she thinks, maybe we’d be a good match.” She fake pouts and shrugs. 

The voice of the fucking hat whispers in his ear again. You have all the bravery you need to for Gryffindor, your time will come to use it. “  And the clock starts to chime midnight.

_ Do Something... _

He takes a step in closer to her, trying not to shake from what he hopes is not just the cold. He swallows nervously again.

“Pansy- “

“Neville?”

And he kisses her, to keep her for the new year, for the year after and all the years to come. 


End file.
